BLAST: The Balloon-Borne Large Aperture Submillimeter Telescope

Previous Results

BLAST Science

BLAST, or the "Balloon-borne Large-Aperture Sub-millimeter Telescope," will fly from a Long Duration Balloon
(LDB) platform and incorporate a 2-meter primary mirror with large-format bolometer arrays operating at
250, 350, and 500 μm. By providing the first sensitive large-area (~0.5-40 deg2) submillimeter
surveys at these wavelengths, BLAST will address some of the most important cosmological and Galactic
questions regarding the formation and evolution of stars, galaxies and clusters.

The motivation for building the original BLAST was to provide the first sensitive large-area
(~0.5-40 deg2) submillimeter surveys to address important cosmological and Galactic questions
regarding the formation and evolution of stars, galaxies, and clusters. BLAST's primary goals were to:

Make high-resolution maps of diffuse galactic emission over a wide range of galactic latitudes.

Through its three science flights, BLAST has succeeded in all of these goals!

BLASTPol

BLASTPol was a rebuilt and enhanced version of the BLAST telescope, with added linear polarization
capability, making it a uniquely sensitive polarimeter for probing polarized Galactic dust emission.
BLASTPol made two Antarctic flights in 2010 and 2012 with the goals of addressing the role magnetic fields
play in star forming regions. In particular BLASTPol sought to answer the following questions:

How strong are magnetic fields in molecular clouds, and how does the field strength vary from cloud to
cloud?

BLASTPol 2010 Lupus Results

Though analysis is ongoing, early results of observations of the Lupus I molecular cloud appear to be
consistent with the picture of a primary filament approximately perpendicular to the large-scale magnetic
field, with secondary filaments running nearly parallel to the field
(Matthews et al. 2013: arXiv:1307.5853).